I suppose the old adage is true: time really does fly when you're having fun. My, oh my, has this month been a while ride.
Since my last post I've: moved dorms (for the fifth time in a year), finished my third semester of college, seen Austria, France, and Italy (x3), finished one book and started two more, hiked in the Italian Alps (i dolomiti), drank a lot of Italian coffee, and climbed many-a-hotel stairs.
Truly, I do not know where the last two weeks, month or year have gone. In my mind 2014 is still a blur that I'm trying to make sense of. While this past year hit me with some serious challenges I am grateful for the refuge I have found here in Italy, yet again.
I am continually surprised by my love for this place. Words can describe my gratitude for this country's and its people's generosity, humor, and capacity to give love to a stranger.
I would be lying if I said I was ever ready or happy to embrace the change that traveling to a new place involves (whether I've been there before or not), but there is no force in this world that I can employ to stop time or prevent the inevitable change that the passing of days and nights demands. The only power I have within myself is to be grateful for each sunrise.
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This morning Stephen took me out for coffee. Today is Friday so the market and its patrons crowded the streets of Montichiari and surrounding cafes. After trying to get into a few we found one neither of us had been to before with a table in the back corner. Over espresso we talked about Stephen's impending move back to the States and my upcoming semester. Neither of us could understand how three years had passed since he first came to Italy. We talked about the weight we'd gained and lost, the hair he'd lost, our crooked teeth and how we've grown. Of course I'm still a kid (and he is, too) but we couldn't ignore the passing of time. I cannot ignore how the past three years have shifted our goals, plans, ideas of the world, who we are, and who we are becoming.
When we got back to the apartment I stopped at the bottom of the stairs to take in the smell: a mix of hard water, tired buildings, stale coffee, wet cobblestone, and baking bread. I thought back to my first night and day in Italy. I knew so little and was so young.
I am still young with a lot of ground left to cover but I am more myself than I was back then and take more time to look at the sunrise then I did before. I think maybe what each new year marks for me is not a milestone to mark time lost and opportunities taken or missed, but the bitter-sweetness of one ending and the hope found in the beginning of another.
I can only hope that for all of us this year leads us into: laughter rooted in full bellies, strength in our weakest moments, love in our moments of doubt, redemption and recovery for our changing world, and many opportunities to see the sunset and rise its reliable steadiness.
Despite the many challenges we can face in this life I still believe this world is beautiful and that this life can be sweet.
So much of what lies ahead remains a mystery to me, but I will keep looking for the sunrise. It is all I can do, and I know it is worth the effort.
"What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become."
- David Malouf, “An Imaginary Life”
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Photos from this trip abroad:
With love and light, dear ones!